How do we talk about the environment? Does this communication reveal and construct meaning? Is the environment expressed and foregrounded in the new landscape of digital media?
The Environment in the Age of the Internet: Activists, Communication, and the Digital Landscape is an interdisciplinary collection that draws together research and answers from media and communication studies, social sciences, modern history, and folklore studies. Edited by Heike Graf, its focus is on the communicative approaches taken by different groups to ecological issues, shedding light on how these groups tell their distinctive stories of "the environment". This book draws on case studies from around the world and focuses on activists of radically different kinds: protestors against pulp mills in South America, resistance to mining in the Sámi region of Sweden, the struggles of indigenous peoples from the Arctic to the Amazon, gardening bloggers in northern Europe, and neo-Nazi environmentalists in Germany. Each case is examined in relation to its multifaceted media coverage, mainstream and digital, professional and amateur.
Stories are told within a context; examining the "what" and "how" of these environmental stories demonstrates how contexts determine communication, and how communication raises and shapes awareness. These issues have never been more urgent, this work never more timely. The Environment in the Age of the Internet is essential reading for everyone interested in how humans relate to their environment in the digital age.
The Foundation for Baltic and East European Studies has generously contributed towards the publication of this volume.
The Environment in the Age of the Internet: Activists, Communication, and the Digital Landscape
Heike Graf (ed.) | July 2016
192 | 16 colour illustrations | 6.14" x 9.21" (234 x 156 mm)
ISBN Paperback: 9781783742431
ISBN Hardback: 9781783742448
ISBN Digital (PDF): 9781783742455
ISBN Digital ebook (epub): 9781783742462
ISBN Digital ebook (mobi): 9781783742479
ISBN Digital (XML): 9781783746293
DOI: 10.11647/OBP.0096
BIC subject codes: RN (The environment), RNT (Social impact of environmental issues), RNA (Environmentalist thought and ideology), JFD (Media studies), J (Society and social sciences), PSAF (Ecological science, the Biosphere), UD (Digital lifestyle); BISAC: SCI019000 (SCIENCE / Earth Sciences / General), SCI026000 (SCIENCE / Environmental Science), SCI042000 (SCIENCE / Earth Sciences / Meteorology & Climatology), SOC026040 (SOCIAL SCIENCE / Sociology / Social Theory); OCLC Number: 958163855.
You may also be interested in:
![]() |
![]() |
Notes on Contributors
Foreword
1. Introduction
Heike Graf
Resonance in News Media
About this Volume
References
2. The Environment in Disguise: Insurgency and Digital Media in the Southern Cone
Virginia Melián
Background
Digital Media and Protest
The Study
Camouflaged Arguments
User-Generated Content and Mainstream Media
Networking beyond the Digital
Mobile Personal Engagement
Opportunities for Public Debate
Civic Engagement and Media Practice
Conclusion
References
3. Exploitation or Preservation? Your Choice! Digital Modes of Expressing Perceptions of Nature and the Land
Coppélie Cocq
Mining Boom, Land Rights, and Perceptions of the Environment
YouTube: A Channel for Environmental Activism
Contesting Narratives
Media Logic
Polarisation or Zone of Contact
Conclusions
References
4. Natural Ecology Meets Media Ecology: Indigenous Climate Change Activists’ Views on Nature and Media
Anna Roosvall and Matthew Tegelberg
Introduction
Defining Traditional Ecological Knowledge
Defining Media Ecology
Method and Material
Analysis
Conclusions
References
5. The Culture of Nature: The Environmental Communication of Gardening Bloggers
Heike Graf
Garden Blogs
Environmental Communication from a Systems-Theoretical Perspective
Difference-Theoretical Approach
The Role of Topics
Ecology and Gardening in the Mainstream Media
The Topics of Gardening Blogs
Consumption: Developing/Refusing a ‘Buyosphere’
Production: Developing Green Gardening
Conclusions
References
6. The Militant Media of Neo-Nazi Environmentalism
Madeleine Hurd and Steffen Werther
NPD Media: Party Websites
Emotions
The NPD and the Environment
The Neo-Nazi World of Umwelt & Aktiv
Nature-Oriented Action: A Cure for National Ills
Women, Youth, and Germanic Nature: From Umwelt to Aktion
References
Index
© 2016 Heike Graf. Copyright of each individual chapter is maintained by the author(s).

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0). This license allows you to share, copy, distribute and transmit the text; to adapt the text and to make commercial use of the text providing attribution is made to the author (but not in any way that suggests that he endorses you or your use of the work). Attribution should include the following information:
Heike Graf (ed.), The Environment in the Age of the Internet: Activists, Communication, and the Digital Landscape. Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2016, https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0096
Further details about CC BY licenses are available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Every effort has been made to identify and contact copyright holders and any omission or error will be corrected if notification is made to the publisher.
Cover photo and design by Heidi Couborn, Trees of Co. Cork, Ireland (2010), CC BY 4.0.
1. Introduction (Heike Graf)
The introduction provides a common framework for the variety of case studies in this volume, which are situated at the intersection of communication, environment, and media. Each chapter examines how "the environment” finds resonance in different communications, and how those communications are conditioned by different types of media, technology, political environment, and the target group of the communication. Mass media, and particularly the news media’s focus on conflict and danger, creates a contextual rhetoric of fear and anxiety regarding the environment; several case studies in this book demonstrate that these rhetorical strategies are also used by activists, environmentalists, and ideologists.
2. The Environment in Disguise: Insurgency and Digital Media in the Southern Cone (Virginia Melián)
This chapter analyzes how environmental activists used digital media to formulate, disseminate and organize an environmental protest action against the construction of pulp mills on the banks of the Uruguay River and against monoculture forestry in Uruguay. Three different groups, one grassroots organization based in Argentina and two environmental NGOs in Uruguay, led the protests from 2005 until 2009. The chapter traces the differences and commonalities between the NGO activists’ and the grassroots activists’ uses of digital media. NGO activists viewed media practices as a traditional one-way communication from the organization, whereas grassroots activists’ use of digital media was becoming a more personal and social form of communication. Age was an important factor, as older activists did not feel comfortable engaging openly in social media. Both the NGOs and grassroots activists saw the national media as the most powerful vehicle for increasing awareness about the protest because a wider range of people could be reached that way than through online, user-generated media. Given that environmental norms are generally weak in Latin America, the protest groups formulated their arguments in political and economic terms, rather than environmental terms. This "discourse camouflage” was designed to resonate with the priorities of national media.
3. Exploitation or Preservation? Your Choice! Digital Modes of Expressing Perceptions of Nature and the Land (Coppélie Cocq)
This chapter presents a case study of two YouTube videos disseminated as part of an activist campaign against mining in Sweden’s Sámi region. The choice of aesthetics, language, and principles of form indicates that the producers designed their videos according to the "media logic” of activist media. Detailed descriptions of the videos demonstrate how elements such as music, images, and narrative structure express, shape, and convey the activists’ message. The videos are used to create a space for marginalized voices and counter discourses, and for diffusion of information. While the videos do not invite dialogue with viewers, they give an illusion of interaction with a call to action: "you” can choose how the narrative will continue, how it will end.
4. Natural Ecology Meets Media Ecology: Indigenous Climate Change Activists’ Views on Nature and Media (Anna Roosvall and Matthew Tegelberg)
This chapter presents an analysis of interviews with activists working to highlight Indigenous perspectives on climate change and the threat climate change poses to many Indigenous communities. The authors begin by distinguishing between Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) and Western scientific approaches to climate change. It then presents and discusses media ecology theories. Three aspects of media ecologies are particularly noted: how mainstream and alternative media work separately and relate to each other; how national and local media work separately and relate to each other; and how non-Indigenous and Indigenous media work separately and relate to each other. This theoretical discussion provides a framework for the analysis of interviews conducted with Indigenous activists. The chapter includes extensive quotes from the open-ended interviews. Interviewees describe the limitations of a national news ecology dominated by mainstream media, which rarely makes room for indigenous perspectives or knowledge of climate change. They also comment on the ways in which their own media practices, situated within diverse news ecologies, attempt to create dialogue and generate awareness of these issues. The activists call for further integration of TEK perspectives into the existing news media ecosystem. The authors conclude that these changes are needed to establish a more democratic and effective means of addressing climate change.
5. The Culture of Nature: The Environmental Communication of Gardening Bloggers (Heike Graf)
This chapter analyzes approximately fifty Swedish and German gardening blogs to examine "ordinary” people’s media communication about environmental issues. The "difference-theoretical approach” that frames this study is described. The author finds that the communicative reactions of the garden bloggers to ecological concerns cohere around two ideas: domination over or partnership with nature. Blog entries generally concentrate on two main topics: consumption in terms of goods, and production in terms of gardening. These are topics with a high potential of connectivity. The chapter includes numerous quotes from the blogs as well as summarizations of the comments in response to blog posts. The topic of consumption can be addressed from several different perspectives; it is possible to argue for more or even less consumption without being aware of ecological consequences. However, topics concerned with production in home gardens are generally dominated by arguments for sustainable gardening, at least in text-based blogs. The author concludes that blogging is not so much about convincing people with different opinions as it is about coordinating the network of people who share similar interests and opinions.
6. The Militant Media of Neo-Nazi Environmentalism (Madeleine Hurd and Steffen Werther)
This chapter examines how neo-Nazi websites and print media wed the slogans, symbols, visuals, and narratives of the radical patriot to those of the homeland-loving environmentalist, and how this combination results in a coherent set of complementary media messages. The case history is the media of the National-Democratic Party of Germany (NPD), focusing on the years 2010–2013. The chapter analyzes the NPD’s web presence and the magazine Umwelt & Aktiv, including images, tone, themes, and calls to environmentalist action, and the dimensions of gender and youth in the messaging. These media deploy the key concept of Heimat, which comprises territory, culture, and people, and which the neo-Nazis wish to defend against perceived enemies, such as immigrants and internationalists. The frames of fear (of threats to the Heimat) and nostalgia (for what must be protected) are combined in a narrative of "irreparability,” effectively linking the visuals and narratives of militant xenophobia to biocentric environmentalism. The standard anti-globalization, pro-environment messaging, which is also used by ecocritics on the left, is given a special, frightening slant: the need to protect German (and European) biomass.